I came across this interesting article the other day, by Robert Bruce who "describes his experiences observing the auras of people with terminal illness".

He describes his observations regarding the aura of a person in the months, days and minutes before physical death. A fascinating read!

What's more, the author seems genuine to me. There are a lot of websites and articles on the web describing spiritual phenomena that feel like not much more than an intellectual exercise, stringing together information found elsewhere. But this guy feels authentic to me - reading his article touched me and brought me joy.

He has his own website (linked at the bottom of the article) which I won't link here because he offers a service, but it's worth to have a look.

Thanks for this article. The only one I had read on the subject before, which I am still looking for in order to quote from it in English (as I have the Italian version of the book), is the result of Dr Barbara Brennan's personal experience in her book Hands of Light. I will keep looking for it and post it when I find it.

As a personal comment, the only time I can remember I personally actually "saw" the aura of a living being, was in the form of flashing lights in all the colours of the rainbow coming out of my fingertips as I was typing. But it was 4.00 a.m., I was under pressure, and there might have been an unusual concentration of DMT in my body to account for that exceptional experience. Even though this has nothing to do with dying, it did provide evidence to me that we have this energy field and that it can be seen and observed.

Here is a quote from Chapter 8 (pages 68 – 70), of Hands of Light (Bantam, 1990), by Dr. Barbara Brennan, whose education and professional background can be found here: http://www.barbarabrennan.com/about-barbara.php. I am quoting these extracts in compliance with the “Fair use” provision contained in the Copyright Law of the United States and the “Quotation” provision contained in the “Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works”, to offer comparative material on the topic you raised, which incidentally touches on Near Death Experiences. I have deliberately kept the quotes short and left out references to other parts of the book, repetitive parts or reflections on issues which were not strictly related to the topic you raised.

I guess it is quite unusual to be able to observe these phenomena, and it is interesting to compare what clairvoyants see.

«I have observed two people who were in the dying process a couple of days before their deaths. In both cases, the people were dying of cancer and had been ill for some time. The lower three bodies were breaking up and coming off the body as opalescent cloudy blobs. This gave the person an opalescent white look. The lower three chakras were also breaking up, with long threads of energy coming out of the solar plexus. The upper four chakras appeared to be very wide open, almost like gaping holes.

There was no longer a shield over them. The people who were crossing over spent most of their time out of the body and away. Apparently they were off with their spirit guides somewhere. When the people were in their bodies, there were plenty of spirits around the room».

In the same chapter the author quotes her guide, Heyoan, who, she explains had «been lecturing on the death process»:

«The process of death, that which we would call transition to greater awareness, can be seen as a process in the energetic field. We will describe this now to help you understand the process of death from the auric point of view. There is a washing of the field, there is a clearing, an opening of all the chakras. When you die, you are going to another dimension. There is dissolution in the three lower chakras. There is dissolution of, and note we say dissolution, of the three lower bodies. Those of you who have watched individuals die have seen the opalescent quality of the hands, of the face, of the skin. It is an opalescent mother of pearl as the individual is dying, and the beautiful opalescent clouds are wafting off. Those clouds are the lower energy bodies which serve to hold the physical body together. They are disintegrating. They waft off, and the chakras there are opened and there are cords of energy coming out. The upper chakras are great open holes into other dimensions. So this is the beginning stages of death where the energy field begins to separate.

The lower parts of the energy field separate from the upper parts. And then during the three hours or so around the hour of death, there is a washing of the body, a baptism, a spiritual baptism of the body where the energy is flushed through like a fountain right up the main vertical power current. A fountain of golden light flushes through, and all of the blocks are cleansed. And the aura becomes white gold. How will this be experienced by the individual who is dying in terms of memory?

You have already heard it. A person sees his or her entire life wash by them. Well that's it. There is a concomitant energy field phenomena of the washing of the aura. All blocks are let go. All forgotten experiences of that lifetime are unblocked. They all flow through the consciousness. Thus, all of the history of that lifetime flows through the consciousness and when the person leaves, the consciousness leaves. It is the dissolution of many of the walls that were created for the process of transformation in this particular lifetime. It is a tremendous integration.

With the dissolution of the walls of forgetting within you, you remember who you truly are. You become integrated with your greater self and feel the lightness and the vastness of it».

At this point the Author’s guide explicitly refers to NDEs:

«Thus death, contrary to popular opinion, is a very wonderful experience. Many of you have read the descriptions of those who have been pronounced clinically dead and have come back to life. They all speak of a tunnel with a brilliant light at the end of it. They speak of meeting a wondrous being at the end of that tunnel. Most have a life review and a discussion of that life with that being. Most reveal that they themselves decided to return to the physical world to complete their learning, even though it was so beautiful where they went. Most of them no longer fear death, but look forward to it as a great release into serenity.

So it is your wall that separates you from this truth: What you call death is actually transition into light. The death that you imagine you will experience can be found within your wall. Every time you separate yourself in any way you die a small death. Every time you block your wonderful life force from flowing, you create a small death. Thus as you remember those separated parts of your being and reintegrate them back into yourself, you have already died. You come back to life. As you expand your awareness, the wall between the world, the wall between spiritual reality and physical reality dissolves. Thus death dissolves, it is nothing but the releasing of the wall of illusion when you are ready to move on. And who you are is redefined as the greater reality. You are still your individual self; when you drop your body, you will maintain the essence of self. (...) Your physical body dies, but you move into another plane of reality. You maintain that essence of self beyond body, beyond incarnation. And when you leave your body, you may feel yourself to be a point of gold light, but you will still feel yourself».

Of course these clairvoyant observations do not refer to sudden deaths.

Anyway, many ancient cultures refer to the existence of different centres or intelligences in the body.

When I first came across the idea that the so-called power centre or navel chakra dissolves at time of death, I was reminded of the movie Ghost, where an earthbound spirit uses his power centre to move physical objects. What I am wondering now, after many years, is whether our gut-based functions are only temporarily delegated to that area.